A modern-day pub is the intriguing setting for a new take on Wozzeck by the Royal Court’s associate director, Carrie Cracknell.

Alban Berg’s first opera, composed between 1914 and 1922 and finally premiered in 1925, follows the trajectory of a downtrodden ex-soldier who murders his unfaithful girlfriend.

Based on Georg Büchner’s unfinished 1836 play, Wozzeck’s story has been interpreted by many, including the likes of Tom Waits and film director Werner Herzog, who cast Klaus Kinski in the role of the hapless soldier.

Now it gets an intriguing staging from the Royal Court’s associate director Carrie Cracknell at the English National Opera, its first production there in 25 years.

Cracknell sets the action in a dank, modern-day pub inhabited by a crowd of lager-swilling low lifes. Wozzeck lives in a grotty flat above it. Occasionally, mysterious Middle-Eastern children appear, only seen by our unstable anti-hero.

Possibly they are former victims from his time in the army. The suggestion that Wozzeck is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder is both valid and neat but it’s also slightly limiting.

The opera is an exaggerated and anti-realistic piece, full of lurid symbolism and dark comedy. By providing a relatively realistic setting, Cracknell softens its angular expressionism into something softer and safer. It becomes EastEnders with singing.

But what singing. Baritone Leigh Melrose is on blazing form as Wozzeck and he pushes his rich voice and fine dramatic gifts to the very limits of anguish and tenderness.

He’s matched by a terrific performance from Sara Jakubiak as his girlfriend Marie. Tom Randle and James Morris are excellent, too, as a coke-snorting captain and a callous doctor respectively.

Not all of the smaller parts are as well cast but conductor Edward Gardner – though he occasionally drowns the voices – draws irresistibly silky and seductive playing from the orchestra.